He calls me every Wednesday. Every single one. Sometimes just for two minutes, from the parking lot at work.
“Just checking on you, Ma,” he says.
“I’m fine, honey,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “I just wanted to hear it.”
Last Tuesday, I was visiting the Seattle hospital for my monthly check on the program. I stopped in the cafeteria to get a cup of tea before I drove home.
There was a little girl sitting alone at the end of a long table near the window. Maybe eight years old. Dark braids. A hospital visitor sticker on her sweatshirt. She had a juice box and nothing else.
She was watching the people at the next table eat their sandwiches. When she saw me looking, she dropped her eyes to the table and pretended to read the label on her juice.
I knew that look. I’d seen it forty-seven years ago, at Franklin Elementary, at the end of a long cafeteria table.
